mindstalk | "We're not animals"

Told to take this discussion somewhere else, I'm dumping my expanded thoughts here.

"We're not animals." There's the biologist response, of "oh, yes we are." There's the logician response, of "if we're not animals, then what was the point of bringing up homosexual behavior in the wild? And then animal rape should be irrelevant to us." And there's the philosopher response of muttering about the naturalistic fallacy. Whether rape or gayness are natural, or happen in other species, is irrelevant to their wrongness or rightness for us. Rape's wrong because it hurts people. Gay behavior is okay because it doesn't. Evolutionary background is irrelevant. We can use condemnation and prison to discourage behavior we don't like regardless of the reasons behind it. Murder's natural, under some circumstances; infanticide is natural. But we don't make excuses for those.

"Naturalness" would be relevant only if a behavior was *so* natural that it wasn't controllable, that the threat of punishment wouldn't deter men from raping. But being imprisoned would still prevent the rapist from committing further rapes (at least, outside of prison); "I can't help myself" isn't exactly a good argument for being allowed out on the street. And if men were that much of an uncontrollable ravaging horde then female separatism -- or isolation of males -- would make a lot of sense. Fortunately, morality, empathy, and fear are (imperfectly) effective in restraining aggression.

Evolution isn't an excuse for bad behavior; bad excuses aren't a reason for denying facts of natural history.

Thoughts? Can this be said better? Am I wrong?

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Rape is natural ... and wrong. It is important to understand the way in which rape is natural, the better to deter and prevent its occurrence, however. If we fool ourselves into believing that rape is some behavior so horrificially evil that only a very tiny minority of men would even feel an impulse toward it, we only increase the likelihood of rapes happening, because we will fail to put in place barriers to the crime.

Morality, by the way, is also natural. Read De Waal's Good Nature on the evolution of moral conduct in animals, especially the great apes.

Haven't read that book, though I attended a talk he gave on fairness in primates, like the poor monkey refusing to work for unequal pay and going on strike. I've seen Marc Hauser say we've evolved to have a moral grammar. Like language: an intrinsic sense there is a morality, but what the morality is can be cultural.

Sounds about right to me. You can even throw in infidelity there. It's perfectly natural (otherwise there'd be no inclination towards it), but it doesn't mean it isn't societally frowned upon. And that's okay. People choose what they choose.

Yeah, I thought of throwing philandering and cuckoldry, but feared that'd poison things given the shadow of evolutionary psychology, which gets accused of justifying those as well as rape.

This might not be totally relevant, but I'm reminded of the current hype over "naturalness" as if being natural is the greatest quality something can have. This looks even more ridiculous when one realizes that things like uranium are also natural, and definitely not something you'd want in your home.

Yeah. Or smallpox, or shit, or male pattern baldness, or having your bones go fragile after menopause (or after a fetus beats you out in the biochemical fight for your calcium.)

To a transhumanist, 'natural' is almost a curseword. More nuancedly, it's neutral. Natural food? Sure, because I don't trust our understanding (or commercial manipulation of food.) Natural medicine? Dear god no.

Damn, I used my Zefiris icon already. Aw hell, immortal robot gods are always good.

My feeling precisely. OTOH, getting back to the original issue, I'm also deeply suspicious of most evo psych, because from everything I've read it largely seems to be a series of biological "just-so stories" designed to prove some moral point the alleged scientist wishes to prove.

Biological determinism has been popular in the US for the past 25-30 or so years (largely since the conservative/Republican revival in the late 1970s) and has been repeatedly used as a tool by sexists, racists, and similar vile idiots.

I find it both interesting and exceedingly illustrative that evo psych is pretty much never used to support anything other than ideas favored by social conservatives (primarily racial inequality & misogyny). So, I can definitely see how the comments you made did not go over well, since evo psych has been deliberately and consciously used as a tool of oppression, not just by non-scientists using the data, but by some of the people doing the (often ludicrously biased) studies. From everything I've read, there is no such thing as politically neutral social science or biology if the subject matter is human behavior and so the first step in looking at any study (or in some cases, when looking at entire disciplines, like evo psych) is what the agenda is.

I'm tempted to say evo psych gets used by social conservatives because social liberals are smart enough not to drag natural history into human politics.

There's also that nature tend to not be liberal. Red in tooth and claw, infanticide, sexual maneuvering, status hierarchies... or else communist-like collectives, casually sacrificing individual members for the good of the whole^W germ line. Apart from symbiotic mutualism, stuff like trade and democracy doesn't exactly leap out of the biology books.

All that said, Peter Singer wrote A Darwinian Left, saying the Left should embrace an evolutionary view of human nature, not hide behind ideas of cultural malleability. Ideas of universal human rights should be grounded in recognition of an evolved human nature. Evo psych can tell us why people don't like being killed, or getting unfair pay, and why women don't like getting raped.

And I think the man behind it all, E. O. Wilson, is a leftist.

As for the alleged abused of evo psych... I've been exposed to the field mostly through Wilson, Dawkins, Pinker, Tooby and Cosmides, and Robert Wright. Seems okay, though Wright had some problems.

You can find such information, it's just not in articles written by sociobiologists and their ilk. Here's one good example.

There's as much politics as there is science involved in discussing these issues. I've read Wilson's work, and my two reactions were that he knows vastly more about ants than about mammals and that it was clear that the ideas he came up with depressed the hell out of him. Thankfully (at least when applied to social vertebrates) kin selection is utter nonsense.

I think one of the key points that gets ignored is how great a part cultural transmission of data plays, not just in humans, but in vast numbers of mammals and birds. For example, if a female baboon isn't taught by a mother or aunt how to raise young (or at minimum doesn't have a chance to observe them caring for an infant baboon), it is an utterly incompetent mother and its young are very likely to die. This knowledge has been transmitted among primates (and possibly many other social animals) for many 10s of millions of years.

Of course, I have an MA in cultural anthro, and so am somewhat biased.

Why is vertebrate kin selection utter nonsense?

young: Yeah, I remember Goodall noting the effect of a good upbringing on the next generation. Or in some cases of a poor upbringing, the effect of practice (to the benefit of the later children.)

Why is vertebrate kin selection utter nonsense?

I last worked with this data intensively 15 or so years ago, so I don't remember all the details (I'm very much looking forward to memory upgrades), but two major points I remember are:

1) The low level of genetic difference between related and supposedly un-related populations, especially in a local area.

2) A variety of social vertebrates practice adoption, which makes no sense under kin selection.

One side-note about Goodall's data, it's fascinating, but if also utterly useless if you are looking for a picture of chimpanzee social behavior in anything other than a heavily modified and highly stressed environment. Ultimately, it's not much better than zoo data, both because of the size of the Gombe reserve, and (more importantly) because Goodall fed and medicated the chimps to the point that she raised their population well above the local carrying capacity, producing severe overcrowding since they had nowhere else safe to go. So, the amount of aggression she found is unsurprising, almost all severely stressed and overcrowded animals become aggressive.

Adoption could make plenty of sense, if the natural circumstances of adoption tended to be that a related mother had died, so the adoptee was a nibling or cousin, and if the cost of adoption to the adopter's direct reproduction isn't too high. Extreme case: sterile female adopting her sister's children.

It'd also make sense, in a more neutral way, if there are no natural circumstances of adoption, and an instinct to take care of available infants normally only picks up one's own offspring.

Except that there have been a fair number of cases of unrelated adoptions among primates and various carnivores (I remember at least one involving cape hunting dogs). I have not studied this extensively, and I have also run more than one case (IIRC 2 or 3 cases) of cross-species adoption with no human intervention involved.

This implies to me that adoption does occur "naturally" and not only among closely related animals.

Then there is the fact that at least among old world primates, nurturing young is largely learned behavior(I don't know anything about nurturing young being learned or not among other social mammals, but I'd be slightly surprised if learning didn't play at least some part).

Combine these two facts, and what I see is that nurturing young is specifically not genetically determined, and most especially not determined based on kin selection.

Given that the entire basis of kin selection involves a drive to increase relative survival of the individual's genes in relation to the overall species genepool, the lack of a strong instinct for specifically nurturing related young, combined with the fact that various varieties of mammals are willing to adopt both non-related young and on occasions young of a different species, and the result looks a whole lot to me like kin selection is fatally flawed.

In any case, Gould's ideas have always made vastly more sense to me, both because of his science and his ideology, which I consider to be effectively inseperable at least when discussing issues of human evolution. One of the many reasons I dismiss much of what Dawkins has to say is his claims about "objective science". I'm (mostly) willing to believe in objective physics and chemistry. There is IME no one studying human evolution or aspects of biology directly relating to human evolution who does not have both a social and a scientific agenda in their studies. Gould is at least willing to admit this fact about himself, Dawkins claims objectivity (at least regarding the social aspects of his science), which to me says he's either a liar or a fool.

Thing is, what does a handful (or few handfuls) of adoption examples really tell us? To me it's compatible with nurturing instincts being imprecise and capable of going "wrong". I'd make an analogy with homosexuals, or intersex individuals. Or with the fact that we 'adopt' pets, that we find baby mammals of various kinds cute, plus adult cats and dogs. Our "baby!" triggers aren't finely tuned to human babies, but are rather broader in scope, and can pick up lots of false positives. If we can find a kitten to be cute and nurturable, perhaps a dog can as well.

Hagfish, on the other hand, are not cute.

And as far as anecdotes go, I've seen a lot of stories from new parents, especially fathers, who saw the newborn and report some switch flipping. "This is MINE and I will nurture and protect it." Which of course doesn't tell them how to change a diaper, but at least gets them willing to try.

(I've also been hearing that the details nursing is something human babies have to learn, which surprised me. OTOH, I think there are sucking instincts which get them in the right direction.)

And again, kin selection doesn't require an internal drive to favor kin, or an instinct for identifying kin; it selects for behaviors which tended in the recent past to have a net effect of favoring kin.

Example: many nesting birds will feed whatever chicks they find in the next, with surprisingly little discrimination, and brood on alien eggs introduced to the nest. 'Adoption' of a sort. Maladaptive, except that alien eggs or chicks don't happen to them much, naturally. When it does, when the population starts being parasitized by cuckoos, they get a lot more sensitive. Similarly, communally nesting birds will be a lot more aware of which chick is *theirs*, while isolated nesting birds will feed whatever open mouth is in their nest.

So... some animals doing adoptions, either because their baby-filter is too wide or because they unusually ran across some other young and took it in, or both, I don't think disproves much about kin selection, though it may well tell us something about nurturing instincts.

I don't think disproves much about kin selection, though it may well tell us something about nurturing instincts.

From my PoV at least, it looks much like both the level of genetic determination of behavior is fairly low even for behaviors one would expect to be highly determined, and also that if there are any instinct or learned behavior surrounding nurturing seem to support Gould's ideas of species-level selection, which is an idea that has always made sense to me.

However, my primary point regarding at least social mammals (I know vastly less about birds, and would be very surprised if anything I discuss below held true for any of the less intelligent Classes) is that one of the crucial things evo psych neglects is behavior that learned and then transmitted from one individual to another. I don't just mean among humans, but also among all primates, and to an extent among all social mammals and perhaps all mammals. There is also significant evidence of long-term learned behavior among birds (including everything from species-wide tool use, to species-specific song details). In short, mammals and birds rely upon both genetics and "culture" to transmit information from one generation to the next, and as the animal's brains and social structures grow more complex, cultural transmission becomes an increasingly important method of transmission.

I have literally never seen any writing in evo psych that even acknowledged, much less discussed this perspective, which I believe is largely due to ideological bias among evo psych professionals. I firmly admit that as a trained anthropologist and a social progressive, the importance I place upon "culture" due to a mixture of the evidence I have seen and my own ideological bias.

As a side note, I'm not certain if I've shown you this link about genetic determinism before. I've researched that the problems with sociobiology/evo psych in a fairly obsessive fashion, and everything in that article that I've checked is spot on, which among other things means that pretty much all data based on twin studies is complete junk based on both tiny sample sizes and highly contaminated data.

However, I think the most important part of the article is the discussion of anthropology vs genetic determinism, which has been an on-going struggle in (primarily US) social science since the beginning of the 20th century. This is (at least) as much a political struggle as a scientific one, and I simply do not believe in anything remotely resembling objective science regarding the study of human (or in most cases primate) behavior.

The Sapolsky/Foreign affairs article was pretty interesting, though I'd note that while human cultures have ranged from polygyny to polyandry, they're much more frequent in the monogamy/polygyny areas than polyandry, which to my knowledge consists of "Tibet", and has the caveat "the multiple husbands are typically brothers". That there's more behavioral flexibility in response to different environments is interesting, but it's also in a way just shifting the determinism around.

(Yay, comment editing!) I'd also note that from what I know, death by violence rates in hunter-gatherer societies range from "high" to "really really high" by our standards; for all the wars, we *are* a peaceful phase of the species now.

I've just started the Dusek but it's pissing me off already.

Dawkins' ideology is contained in his biological cosmology. He produces the ideas scientific model for the social Darwinist without drawing any explicit social Darwinist conclusions. Dawkins work is ideology in an even stronger sense that E. O. Wilson's precisely because none of it is explicit. Dawkins can present himself as the pure scientist in contrast to Gould and Lewontin precisely by feigning political unconsciousness and indifference.

Damned if he does, damned if he doesn't. Having read all of Dawkins, I find painting him as a hands-off social Darwinist to be rather crass slander.

Edited Date: 2007-11-07 23:21 (UTC)

Further Dusek observations:

Lists various egregious instances I hadn't known about and see no reason to doubt; I can believe that as with science fiction, I've tended to read the best and somehow miss or forget the trash.

I don't trust Gould and Lewontin that much, especially when being invoked against gene selectionism. The quoted class/member distinction of Lewontin only lowers my opinion further.

Fodor's cited; I'd note that he has a recent piece in the London Review of Books attacking natural selection in general.

Oh look, more "ideological consequences" of "cosmologies", implying we should reject Dawkins side vs. Gould because it's icky.

Heh, cites Vincent Sarich to make a point. I doubt the author would like Sarich on race/IQ.

Oh look, argument ad Alabama, two paragraphs after criticizing Dennett for accusing Gould of latent religious mysterianism.

Edited Date: 2007-11-07 23:50 (UTC)

You are confusing "evolutionary psychology" with "biological determinism." Biology isn't even completely destiny for the higher animals, let alone for humans.

Evolutionary psychology is essentially based upon the idea of biological determinism. Almost all of it involves researchers trying to construct biological explanations for modern first world (or even more often, slightly archaic) morals and social patterns. I happen to think biological determinism is utter nonsense, which explains my feelings about the entire discipline of evo psych.

All I can say is that you have a far more cynical and negative view of evo psych. To me it seems like judging science fiction by Piers Anthony and John Norman.

Dawkins has a
scathing review (http://www.simonyi.ox.ac.uk/dawkins/WorldOfDawkins-archive/Dawkins/Work/Reviews/1985-01-24notinourgenes.shtml) of Rose, Kamin, and Lewontin.

I'm vastly unimpressed. I'm not a biologist. I can't argue genetics in detail. However, I have extensively studied the history of social science (that was one of my fields of study [along with physics and math] before going into anthro).

For the entire 20th century, genetic determinism has not only been used by non-scientists to support all manner of reactionary and oppressive ideas, researchers (who depending upon the era, have called themselves eugenicists, sociobiologists, or evolutionary psychologists) have specifically looked for (and using a vast array of dubious research techniques, found) all manner of alleged proofs of the supposed genetic inferiority of "lesser races", women, homosexuals, and criminals.

The (thankfully brief) revival of "criminal genetics" in the mid 1970s and the various attempt to attempt to prove the inherent inferiority of women at mathematics using brain structure and usage studies during the 1990s are only two of many possible examples I've seen such researchers use.

From what I've read, Dawkins has not been associated with any such efforts, but I've never heard him denounce such studies, despite the fact that (at least with the more recent work) the researchers regularly attempt to gain legitimacy by referencing his work, just as similar research from the 70s and early 80s similarly referenced E.O. Wilson's work.

I should note that my knowledge of these issues is largely limited to the United States, and I do not particularly know that relations between social ideas, politics, and biology in other nations. However, in the US at least, Dawkin's dismissal of that work (which I admittedly read, more than 20 years ago) is ill-founded.

What is the connection between "genetic determinism" and Dawkins's review? And I'd note part of the point of the review was that Lewontin et al. attack a straw man, at least when aiming at him, as shown by the cake example. Another point being that they couldn't find actual biologists to quote.

The reductio end point of the direction you argue in seems to be "Darwin has been invoked to defend racial eugenics and Social Darwinism, therefore evolution by natural selection must be wrong." You seem to be saying "sociobiology is used for bad purposes, so must be wrong." I haven't studied the history of social science, but I have read directly or summaries of Dawkins, Williams, Tooby and Cosmides, Hamilton, Haldane, Trivers, so I feel confident saying "the science is good, whatever misuses are made of it." And maybe, "the good science may not be what you think it is."

I'm saying more than that it's being used for bad purposes. I'm saying that a significant number of the researchers (at least in the US) are coming up with and attempting to prove theories for primarily (reactionary) ideological reasons. I haven't kept up with this as much since I left grad school in the mid 90s, and so my data since then has largely been looking up further information of articles that were popularly published, but I think I'm on fairly solid ground in this assertion for US evo psych and sociobiology in the late 70s to early 90s.

I believe that sociobiology became a major force in US biology in the early 1980s largely because of the conservative shift in US politics during that time, and that evo psych continues this trend. If I'm correct, then evo psych will significantly fall out of favor when US politics becomes significantly more progressive. Given that we seem on the edge (hopefully) of just such a transformation, I'm guessing that there will be actual data on this front in 4 or 5 years. If I'm correct, then by that time, most of the hot new theories will be discrediting evo psych, genetic determinism, and the various related ideas. I absolutely have no idea what these new theories will be, but if US politics shifts in a progressive direction, I'm quite convinced that US biology will follow suit.

Evolutionary psychology is essentially based upon the idea of biological determinism.

No, it's based upon the idea that the psychologies of living beings evolve along with their physiologies. This is self-evident: how do you imagine the psychologies of creatures originate? Divine intervention?

However, psychologies are not purely determined by genetics. There are also the effects of the natural environment and of the social environment (culture). These are the domains of memetics, and of free will (in the case of the higher animals, including Man).

I happen to think biological determinism is utter nonsense, which explains my feelings about the entire discipline of evo psych.

Shall I not assume then that you have a carbon-based water-soluble metabolism based on the inhalation of oxygen, the combination of glucose with that oxygen to produce carbon dioxide? Or that you are a tetrapodal biped with warm blood whose species bear their young live?

Perhaps you should explain exactly what you don't consider to be at all "biologically determined," and what your reasons for believing this is. Note that "it can be used by EVIL conserviatives" is NOT a rational reason for disbelieving in something!

Note that "it can be used by EVIL conserviatives" is NOT a rational reason for disbelieving in something!

True, but the fact that it was largely developed by "evil conservatives" (which from my PoV, is an unnecessarily duplicative phrase) is. A study of the history of human biology and social science reveals politics and social attitudes plays at least as much of a role as any sort of idea of "objective science".

True, but the fact that it was largely developed by "evil conservatives" (which from my PoV, is an unnecessarily duplicative phrase) is.

First of all, the proponent of a theory does not affect whether it is true or false. Secondly, current sociobiologists include both liberals and conservatives. Finally, you still haven't explained how biology can avoid influencing psychology, given that species evolve their minds to aid their survival.

Before you and Jordan get off into a spiral (and so far I agree with Jordan, apart from the "free will" bit and the mention of Man), let me ask you to *define* biological determinism or genetic determinism. What do you think those are, and entail?

I'm definitely done arguing with Jordan.

What I mean by genetic determinism is the belief that behavior (specifically, in the cases I've been discussing, the behavior of social mammals) is largely determined by genetics rather than by any other means. I simply do not believe this is true. I would site examples of genetic determinism as being the belief that traits likes levels aggression or sexual preference are genetically determined. I believe genetics does play some (usually fairly minor) role in such behaviors, but my best guess is that it accounts for no more than (at most) 20% of any given behavior, with learning and environmental factors being by far the primary determinants of human and higher primate behavior and significant contributors to all mammalian behavior.

BTW, this (http://www.psych.ucsb.edu/research/cep/primer.html) seems a good summary of what evo psych means to me.

*nods* that fits my own definition of the general field and I completely and totally disagree. As I mentioned in a previous response, I believe that learned and culturally transmitted behavior, including chains of transmitted learning (such as nurturing behavior) that stretch back literally millions of years is a far greater determinant of human behavior than any instincts or other inborn determinants of behavior.

What I do find interesting is that this "culture" has also clearly faced significant selection pressure (individuals whose learning was incomplete or incorrect were less likely to survive and reproduce, thus producing an evolution of the various cultural traits. I've read several fascinating papers on this very topic, but that was well before I was on-line. I shall attempt to find them.

I think the very word "natural" is to be avoided in these sorts of discussions. Nature is complex and certainly not without errors and erratics. All sorts of more or less rare diseases and mutations are "natural" meaning they show up in nature, but that doesn't mean they are "normal".

So saying that something is to be accepted as natural because it occurs somewhere in nature in more or less specific circumstances is missing the point, I think. And what we consider to be natural, normal or just aberrant behaviour often depends on what and how much has been studied.

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